


stars on his skin

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Established Relationship, First Time, M/M, POV Second Person, They Both Try Very Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:08:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is usually harder to distract Adam from his problems with sex, but you think that this time Adam wants to be distracted – and it probably helps that he’s paying for the room, he has <i>invested</i> in sex – and he allows you to persuade him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stars on his skin

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I've been writing a lot of porn lately... I'm sure I’ll get back to Horrible Arboreal Adventures soon enough :V 
> 
> obviously beta'd by [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) who also does [art](http://tkscribbles.tumblr.com/) and is a total gift

It’s not that you never thought about asking out Adam Parrish. You couldn’t help but consider it, every time your eyes lingered on his elegant features for longer than you ought to be able to get away with. Maybe he thought you were checking for bruises. Maybe he thought you were just making pitying faces at him for the fun of it. Mostly you were just admiring what you considered unattainable. He never took your kindness well; your interactions all played out on a field pitted with landmines of things not to say. You never thought that you could ask him out and have him properly understand your intentions.

You were mistaken.

It took you finally being so tired that your brain shut off all inhibitors for you to ask him out, at two in the morning, framing it as romantic in a way that he could not possibly ignore. You will never pretend to understand, but apparently asking him to dinner was not the same as asking to buy him food, it was asking him to _give_ and your Adam, proud and watchful Adam, seemed to have been wanting to give for a long time. You weren’t tricking him into eating with you, you were asking for his time, his attention, his interest. Courtship like an equal, ownership not assumed.

Though, to his credit, your first thought was _absolutely_ that you should have done it months before when you were begging him to take meals from you. Distrust not totally unwarranted. But still; he had said yes, and yes the next time, and the time after that too, until you could call it _dating_.

“It’s embarrassing for you,” Ronan tells you. “You are not meant to acknowledge milestones this small. It’s a slippery slope. Next thing we’ll be commemorating tiny bullshit like the first time Blue spat at you, or Noah’s death.”

Noah punches him lightly on the shoulder, and you fret vaguely about how fit they are to look after each other in your absence. You’ve attempted to distract them by deputizing them both to Head of the Hunt for Glendower, but from the way they keep smirking at each other, you suspect they have other plans. You’re going to come home and find a BMW parked in the middle of the downstairs wall, you’re absolutely sure.

 You’ll deal with it then.

The wheezy grumbling of the Hondayota sounds from outside, and Ronan is sure to make a loud gagging sound as you bolt over to the door to greet Adam. He is soaked in dust and engine oil and you are just so delighted to see him that you can’t decide on an appropriate gesture of greeting and put out a hand for him to shake. He eyes it warily, but accepts, grip firm yet gritty, and you beam. Adam Parrish is a difficult, delicate creature, and it is a tiny miracle every time he chooses you.  

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“He’s been ready for an _hour_ ,” Ronan answers for you, tone explaining what he thinks of the bag lying carefully packed on top of your bed. You would give him an indignant look, but you learned years ago that where Ronan’s concerned, it’s a waste of energy. He has never once felt shame.

“Right. So,” you say, looking between him and Noah and trying to find appropriate parting words. “I expect all buildings and vehicles to be intact on my return.”

“Not people?” Noah asks. Ronan grins at him savagely, and you try to reassure yourself that they’re near-adults who can manage themselves for _two days_. Noah can’t even really get hurt, so. They’ll be fine. Probably.

You tell them, “See you Monday,” and head downstairs. You’re not one step out of Monmouth when you hear a wild cackle and the sound of something shattering.

“Leave them,” Adam tells you. “Come on. Blue was wrong; you’re not their mother.”

You prefer _concerned_ to _maternal_ , but his point stands. He retrieves his bag from his car, throwing it in the back of the Camaro with yours, and he has the map out before you’re even in the driver’s seat. You drive, you pay for gas, he navigates; you didn’t ask Adam how exactly he came up with the precise balances that make this trip equal in his eyes, but you have no problem going along with them.

“You want the north road out of town,” he tells you, and you follow his directions easily. He hasn’t told you where you’re going yet, but you can hazard a guess; the radius of what he’d realistically ask you to pay for gas isn’t that wide. It will be one of the slightly-larger-than-Henrietta cities that doesn’t have anything to its name other than headcount. You don’t care. You would go literally anywhere, and you would gladly pay for so much more than gas if the offer wouldn’t end the trip before it started.

You don’t think you’ll ever recover from the shock of Adam Parrish asking you away for your one month anniversary. Ronan’s probably not done laughing yet either, which strikes you as supremely unfair when he’s the biggest reason the two of you _need_ to leave town for it. Well. Him and Noah.

You honestly never foresaw a problem with a bed in the middle of the main room.

And between that and the Pig’s gearstick being in a supremely awkward location, and Ronan having told Adam not to ‘despoil’ his church with neither of you sure if he was joking, the two of you are getting a little frustrated with Henrietta. Just a little. More than enough.

The road settles quickly into the kind you can coast along, distant cows and abandoned hubcaps drifting past while you reach lightly across to take Adam’s hand. He turns the radio on and away from whatever Ronan had it set to, taps his fingers on the crisp squares of the map, watches the world go past and squeezes your hand every so often, only when he wants to. He looks something like happy, and you feel warm in a way you don’t have a word for.

Then the Pig breaks down. Twenty minutes past the last truck stop, a dozen miles before the next one, and the engine gives the angry whine of a dying animal and stops. You watch a coil of smoke rise up from the hood, and your fingers tighten around the wheel. It’s not the interruption making you anxious, it’s all the new costs a wisp of smoke signifies.

Adam’s eyes are heavy, but he says, “I’ll take a look,” and gets out of the car before you can stop him. He fetches a rag from the boot to protect his hands as he pops the hood open. You stand beside him in solidarity before the bared engine, sleeves rolled up as though you could possibly contribute, and nod affirmingly as Adam scrutinises the Camaro’s inner workings. You are beyond useless and sorely wish you could help.

Adam pulls back eventually, sighing, “If we’re lucky, it just overheated.”

“If we aren’t?” you ask, and his mouth twists sourly. It’ll take a long time to get a tow out where you are. “How long would it take to cool down?”

“Maybe half an hour,” he replies. There’s still a tightness to his mouth that you don’t like, and you hate that he had to fall into this role on his holiday, but you’re not sure what else you can do. A tow out here would be expensive. A tow out here, you think, might be a very direct injury to Adam’s pride in a way you don’t quite understand.

“We can wait,” you say, trying to sound unconcerned for his benefit, trying to transmit _this is fine_ and _this doesn’t have to be a problem_ and _please, please don’t let this bother you_. He’s not happy, but he follows you around the side of the car to sit in the shade. The air is a lot fresher than what the Camaro filters out, and shielded by the sun it’s not too hot, just warm, pleasant to stretch your legs out. You think if you do get lucky and it’s just overheating then this could almost _add_ to the trip, an amusing anecdote in a ‘spontaneous disaster’ sort of way.

You are desperately afraid that it’s going to be a step back.

“Don’t tell Ronan,” Adam says eventually, staring at the field ahead, “But I don’t really like cows.” You laugh, and he bumps you with his shoulder, and regales you with his attempts to bond with herds at the Barns and how terribly awkward he finds petting cows. You pass half an hour, and then a little longer, and then you go back to standing unhelpfully at Adam’s side in front of the engine.

“You look too confident,” he says, glancing at you warily, like he’s afraid of disappointing you. “You’ve got too much faith in this engine.”

“I have faith in _you_ ,” you correct, and he gives you a shallow ghost of a smile and gets to work.

You got lucky. Adam declares that your engine will live to sputter along another day and crap out on you near some _other_ field, and tells you to look a lot less delighted than you do. He checks other things in the Pig’s intestines, making little tweaks and using the word ‘coolant’ a lot while you try very hard to listen and not be distracted by the elegant movements of his hands. You’re not sure you can say it out loud, but the practiced, experienced way he works over an engine has always been appealing to you, power in the form of real skill.

Something has changed, though. The radio and air conditioner roar back on with the engine, and he slides silently back into the passenger seat, looks out the window and away from you. It takes you a moment to get it, and then you notice the restless shift of his hands, fingers shifting endlessly over the oil staining him.

For once you think you get it. It’s a new inequality introduced where there shouldn’t be one, a cruel trick to set you above him where you’re meant to be doing this _together_. You hate it, too. But you’re not sure how to phrase it so it doesn’t come off condescending, and you’ve been learning that sometimes saying nothing is better than trying and getting things so carelessly, hurtfully wrong.

So, you stay quiet, and you drive, and you hope Adam’s mood can improve on its own. From the way he’s rubbing his fingers, you’re not sure it will. He gives you directions in a terse voice that feels like pouring gravel in your ears, and you follow them until early evening, through the city limits of one of Henrietta’s neighbours, pulling up outside a motel.

It’s Adam’s plan, and Adam’s reservation, and Adam’s deposit on the motel room. You don’t say a thing about how the motel looks, deep in the shade of dusk, because even a word like _functional_ will come across as an insult when it shouldn’t. All you really mean is that the motel looks like it can function as a motel and absolutely nothing else; it is not the gilded excess of hotel rooms you’re used to. A place to park and spend the night, and you try very hard not to let the sum of your thoughts show on your face as you pull your bag from the backseat.

Adam’s too good at seeing through you, though. You turn your face away from him as you haul the bags into your room, so he can’t see the way you regard the worn, burgundy carpet. It’s not that you _mind_ , you absolutely don’t, you live in Monmouth. But you’ve never stayed in a room like this before either; this kind of motel has previously been the kind that gets driven past on the way to a resort, or a lodge, or anything prefaced by ‘luxury’.

In your head, you quickly rearrange things until the motel room can be an _experience_ and you can fix Adam a more genuine smile. “It’s nice,” you tell him.

His jaw tightens, and he just says, “Don’t.”

Something in you sinks. It was not so long ago when you couldn’t even go for groceries with him, because he’d get irritated when you grabbed expensive things and aggravated when you picked cheap ones. You do not want to _regress_. You want to lie on the padded and suspect bedspread with him and watch something pointless on the little box tv and slide your hands up under his shirt until he’s looking at you over his shoulder with half-lidded eyes. There are probably a thousand wrong moves you can make right now to ensure that you and he both spend two days miserable and not talking. But you have to do something.

You catch him by the wrist, thumb pressing against the smooth skin just above his hand, fingers dragging carelessly over the residual oil stains as you try to transmit just how little you care. “Adam,” you say, in your most entreating voice, the one you use as little as possible to keep it effective, “I thought the point was for us to be alone here together?” Your thumb traces along the dark line of his vein, the lightest touch, and you hope.

It is usually harder to distract Adam from his problems with sex, but you think that this time Adam wants to be distracted – and it probably helps that he’s paying for the room, he has _invested_ in sex – and he allows you to persuade him. You pull the drapes, swallow the fact that they are _also_ burgundy, and cup his face carefully in your hands. He’s a miracle who you doubt wants to hear that, so you don’t risk grating on him with praise he’s not in the mood to believe.

Instead, you touch him, hands shifting around his back to rub slow circles into his shoulders. He always carries a terrifying amount of tension in him, a tide you can only ever soothe, but he lets you, leans into you, drops his forehead to your shoulder and lets out a very long sigh.

You tell him, “Let’s make the most of being this far away from Ronan,” and he snorts out a laugh somewhere beside your collarbone before his hands snake around you too, closing over your waist as he turns his head to press a kiss into the side of your neck. His kiss is warm and welcome and you close your eyes to it, because this is all you ever desired; your arms full of Adam, and him happy to be there. It hurts, sometimes, how he doesn’t like being wanted, but that’s your problem. And besides; sometimes he _does_ like being wanted. You just need to make the most of those.

You fully intend to make the most of _this_. He lets you back him up to the bed, pulls you down with him so you’re sitting in his lap, your hands threading through the uneven curls of his hair, every touch of his lips to yours an eclipse. It takes him a very long time to relax, but he does, pieces of his guard dropping away one by one, the spaces between widening to let you through. There is an unspoken kind of vulnerability in the way he lets you touch him, and you never want to get it wrong, but it is a lot easier to get things right with your fingers than it is with your words. You stroke the base of his neck, savour the sun-roughened skin, and he lets just the smallest huff of enjoyment slip from his mouth to yours.

There’s something warm to him all the time, like he soaked up so much dry Henrietta light that he’s always overflowing with it now, heat spilling out between your fingers as you draw constellations in his freckles. The angle of his shoulders has dropped a few very significant degrees, and he folds more easily into your arms. Your legs slip wider until you’re straddling him fully, no space between you, and you kiss him like you’re drinking him in, a bottomless well you could never get enough of.

“Gansey,” he murmurs, and it’s so good to hear him relaxed, happy, as he strokes a hand through your hair. He’s still too careful for the motion to be called lazy, but it’s as close as he can get, languidly content. You’re brimming over with the need for him, almost inarticulate with it, and it’s starting to take restraint to keep your touches tenderly light. But Adam, perfect and wonderful Adam, he knows you well enough by now, and he whispers, “Do you want to...?” into the shell of your ear, his breath dizzying you as much as anything he could say.

“Yes,” you say, and your voice aches as much as your chest, “Absolutely.” You’re not exactly on familiar territory, you don’t know the etiquette for this sort of thing, but nothing matters nearly as much as Adam’s words playing chaos in your mind and the stirring interest between you, the hard press of _want_ from each of you, for each other.

You’re still sitting on top of him, legs spread around his waist, and he flips you both over, a movement too fast to follow before you’re on your back blinking up at him. He looks uncertain and flustered and totally picturesque between your thighs, and the delight on your face is a signal he can read, enough to bolster him until he lowers himself onto you, his kiss something you can lose yourself in while a hesitant hand starts up your inseam.

Neither of you mentions that you haven’t done this before. It’s pretty obvious, even unspoken, from the uncertain way Adam palms you through your pants and the shuddering sigh you let out in response. You’d always thought you’d be just a little more coherent; instead his elegant fingers make an efficient wreck of you, until you’re straining against your pants and staring dazedly at Adam like you never imagined he’d be so _good_ at this. There’s a heavy blush on his cheeks, and his look mirrors yours, like he can’t believe what he’s doing to you. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head, the revelation of how much you need him right now, and then his hands delve beneath your waistband and your eyes roll back.

“Christ,” you gasp, part of you determined to let him know exactly how incredible he’s making you feel, “We should have done this sooner.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, sliding your pants down until you’re bare and waiting and so completely ready for him. You reach up and settle a hand around the back of his neck, pull him down into another long kiss that feels like drowning. You’re aching for more of his touch, but you want to draw this out, you want to revel in every new sensation of his skin against yours, the hard press of his hips, his own cock taut against his pants.

You fumble with the zip to free him while he gasps low against your bottom lip, and then you can stroke along his length, marvel at the softness and hardness of it, thumb the slit until Adam’s biting down curse words an inch from your face. You’d love to touch him more, to savour the feel of him and lavish him with all the attention you’ve been longing to give, but you understand without being told that this time isn’t for that. This time is for him, which means, for you. You’re still working it out.

The trip has a single, very transparent purpose, so you came prepared. Adam pulls away from you to get condoms and lube and you lay back on the bed and feel dwarfed by the space without him in it. You’re afraid that something might change with the distance, but it doesn’t; Adam returns pink-cheeked and irresistible and you hold up your arms for him to fall back into.

He pushes a finger into you, slicked up with something viscous but warmed by his hand, and you shift uncomfortably, feeling more pressure than pleasure. But his hand changes angle, he adds another finger, shifting inside you with an impossibly slow motion and something in you starts to spark, to enjoy it, to want more.

You hold him close against you, reluctant to break the kiss, and probably making it awkward and difficult to position himself, but it’s very hard to care. His hands are so hot on your thighs you feel like they’ll leave burning brands, and there’s nothing you want more. His chest heaves unevenly, lips stuttering against yours, and your arms pull tight around his shoulder, as hazy with desire as he is. When he finally pushes into you, all higher function blinks out against the beautiful, filling feeling of _Adam_ , and your head falls back against the bed.

You think you might be moaning. You think you might be moaning _embarrassingly loudly_ but it’s impossible to care. Adam’s dropped his head to your chest, his hands fisting in the sheets either side of your head, and his hips pull back, just a little, and it’s a wave of pleasure and the perfect, hot fit of him all over again that has you groaning and incoherent.

One of your hands finds the back of his neck again, to clutch him to you, and the other holds the sheets like you need to be grounded. Unconsciously, your legs close around his waist, and you don’t want an inch of space between you, you want the incredible warmth of him against you, you want the closeness, the bridge you are so bad at making with words. You want the sunburned, freckled vista of Adam stretched out over you, you want his delicate, graceful hands on every part of you, you want to breathe in his every exhalation, and you want it all forever. It feels like the kind of magic you’ve been hunting for, and you are beyond grateful to Adam for giving it to you.

It’s over too quickly. One of the shaky thrusts of his hips presses up against something absolutely electric inside you and then you’re done, scrabbling against his back and the sheets while your head goes white and every single part of you pulses with ecstasy. Adam’s forehead grinds against your shoulder, his sweat mixing with yours as he gasps out your name, and you dimly feel the sensation of his release inside you, hot and strange and enough to make your legs curl that bit tighter around him.

There’s a sweet, surreal throb between your legs as you come back down, and Adam is trying to very gently unlock your knees so that he can move back. You let him, and he drops down beside you, both of you a mess but nothing the motel bedspread won’t have seen before. “Wow,” he mutters.

You reach out to take his hand, lacing his fingers with yours, and he squeezes your sticky palms together. “Wow,” you agree. When you get back to Henrietta, you are going to have to construct yourself a bedroom.

You feel warm and spent and good, and you suspect he feels the same way, lying bonelessly content with his hand in yours. Eventually, he asks, “What do we do now?”

“We should go out, get something to eat,” you say, avoiding the obvious joke about expended energy. “And then… we do that again?”

He snorts and gets up, as relaxed as you’ve ever seen him, and you wish you knew the trick to keeping that quiet smile on his face. But, you’re getting better at it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! I'd love to know what you thought, and I have a [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/) if you'd rather hit me up over here


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